Posted
by
CowboyNeal
on Saturday March 03, 2007 @10:04AM
from the umbra-and-penumbra dept.

SeaDour writes "This Saturday night, March 3rd, a total lunar eclipse will be visible from nearly all inhabited parts of the world. A great shadow will stretch across the surface of the moon, eventually casting it in an eerie red glow as sunlight filters through our atmosphere onto the lunar surface. Viewers in Europe and Africa will have the best vantage point, able to watch the entire eclipse in action, while observers in most of the western hemisphere can see it eclipsed as it rises just after sunset."

I had the opportunity to see one while being far from any light polluting city (or even close to any populated area at all). This was during a night orienteering excercise with the finnish army and we're running around in the middle of the night in some godforsaken forest trying to find the checkpoints. It was a very clear night but after a while it starts to get darker and I look up and the eclipse had started (but no one of use knew about it beforehand). Then at the full eclipse it got really pitch dark... you actually couldn't see your hand infront of you.

And I looked up... it was very beautiful. With clear country air, no light pollution and no moonlight my eyes was able to see the stars in the Milkyway and around that you never see otherwise... the sky was really full of them and gave me a whole other sense of scale about our place in the galaxy. That might be the closest thing to go to space one can experience while still staying earthbound. I can imagine standing on the back of the moon watching out would create the same sensation.

So if the weather is clear... don't stay in or near a city if you can get away. It will be worth the trip.

An actual photo of an eclipse was taken from the moon, by the Surveyor 3 mission in 1967. I made an artificial color version of it, showing the red color refracted from Earth atmosphere (coming from all simultaneous sunrises and sunsets) at http://strangepaths.com/total-lunar-eclipse/2007/0 2/27/en/ [strangepaths.com] (click on "Eclipse seen from the moon" to open the image).